Get to know the exoplanets

Astronomers continue to find planets orbiting other stars. More than 140 have been confirmed so far, with the vast majority orbiting stars fairly similar to the Sun. (That's largely a selection effect, however — the searches have looked mainly at stars with properties similar to the Sun.) In the table below, each known exoplanet is listed in order of increasing period of revolution around its parent star. The three new exoplanets discussed in "Lucifer's planets" are shown in red. All have periods of less than 10 days, and all rank among the least-massive planets yet found outside our solar system.

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